President Xi Jinping urged US President Donald Trump in a phone call on Saturday to avoid "words and deeds" that would "exacerbate" the already tense situation on the Korean Peninsula, state television reported.

Xi also called on "relevant parties to maintain restraint" and to "persist in the general direction of dialogue, negotiations and a political settlement", CCTV said.

Xi stressed that "China and the US have a common interest in realising the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula and maintaining peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula".

Beijing has been voicing some alarm at the growing war of words between Washington and Pyongyang, which included a warning from Trump that North Korea would face "fire and fury" if it kept threatening the US.

Trump kept up the tough rhetoric on Friday, warning Pyongyang would "truly regret" taking any hostile action against the US after he tweeted that the US military was "locked and loaded".

After the phone call, the White House released a statement saying North Korea "must stop its provocative and escalatory behaviour".

According to the statement, the leaders hailed the adoption of a United Nations Security Council resolution targeting the North as an "important and necessary step toward achieving peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula".

"The presidents also reiterated their mutual commitment to denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula," the statement said, stressing the two leaders had an "extremely close relationship" that "will hopefully lead to a peaceful resolution of the North Korea problem".

Trump has sought Xi's help in reining in North Korea's nuclear weapons programme since he took office in January, even as the US cited Chinese entities for easing financial and trade ties that UN sanctions against Pyongyang were meant to halt.

In June, the US Treasury said China's Bank of Dandong served "as a gateway for North Korea to access the US and international financial systems – easing millions of dollars of transactions for companies involved in North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programmes".

The US imposed sanctions on the bank, two individuals and one shipping company over their alleged "illicit financing" and "continued support" of North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced at the time.

Those sanctions followed a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing in Washington in which US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley responded to US congressmen, who accused China of undermining international efforts to stop Pyongyang's march to the world's nuclear club.

Representative Ted Yoho, one of the most strident congressmen in the hearing when it came to Beijing, said China-based businesses are "behind the smuggling of record cargoes of North Korean weapons to the Middle East. So China is funding and allowing North Korea to gain access to these weapons, selling them to the Middle East, going into the hands of terrorists fighting our troops".